This photo of suburban sprawl in San Ramon, California got Kraftwerk’s song “(We Are) The Robots” going through my head, so I was looking it up on Google, but I found this page of “mis-heard” Kraftwerk lyrics instead. I find the one about The Man-Machine particularly humorous.
Archive for November, 2005
My favorite quote from this article about a lingerie store in Maine using live models in their storefront comes from a video game store owner across the street:
“It’s tainting the wholesome businesses down here,” said Carrie Rossignol, co-owner of Video Game Exchange. “I think it’s selfish, and I think it’s morally reprehensible.”
Whatever lady… I mean, don’t you sell all kind of cop-killing, pixelated-sex-having, zombie-eviscerating games in your store? Wouldn’t you be on the other side of this debate if some pro-family crusader with a stick up his ass came to town denouncing violence in games? This kind of opportunistic rock-throwing is what gets my goat about pretty much all moral debate. Can’t people just mind their own business… ever?!
Well I haven’t posted any mp3s on here for a while so here’s a bunch! We’ll start off with some tracks from a band I was lucky enough to check out at a little club near Bocci’s appartment recently, the Arctic Monkeys. Mike made fun of me for describing them as (and I quote): “The hot, new, unsigned, post-Libertines UK band,” but if you can come up with a less pretentious-sounding way of getting all that across in a short phrase then by all means help me out. You know maybe they are signed now, I don’t know. All I know is I was pretty pissed when I passed up a chance to see Franz Ferdinand at the Empty Bottle under similar circumstances, so I wasn’t about to let this one go by. Anyway, they were pretty great. Here are some examples (note that I’ve added this new del.icio.us applet thing, that ought to allow you to play these tracks right here in the browser window. Of course, you’re still free to right click and “Save As” instead. In fact, the Arctic Monkeys have made it known that since they have only commercially released one single to date, they fully encourage free sharing and downloading of all their other tracks!)
Arctic Monkeys - Scummy Man [MP3]
Arctic Monkeys - Mardy Bum [MP3]
Arctic Monkeys - Fake Tales of San Francisco [MP3]
Arctic Monkeys - A Certain Romance [MP3]
Prior to playing “Fake Tales of San Francisco” the singer said, “I suppose you all think you’re owed an explanation. But you’re not.” LOL. Anyway, on to the next thing… I was checking out Bleep.com recently and came across this album called Congotronics 2: Buzz’n'Rumble From The Urb’n'Jungle and it is pretty amazing. Basicallly it is all these bands from the Congo playing on home-made electrified thumb pianos and etc. It is equal parts wierd, distorted and awesome. I was unable to purchase it from Bleep when I first came across it, due to some US/UK licensing snafu, but it looks like it is now available for purchase wherever you are. In the meantime though I went out and picked up “Congotronics 1″ at the record shop, and it is pretty sweet too. Instead of being a compilation, the first CD was a retrospective on a single band (Konono No. 1). Here is a full length sample:
Well that’s it for now. Hope everyone had a thankful Thanksgiving!
It’s an all-synth cover band of Foo Fighters, called:
Bar Lovers
ROFL-copter! Will even like, 10 people (in binary) see where I’m going with this? =)
Honey, please get some Cheerios brand oat cereal…
Published November 22nd, 2005 in Uncategorized. ClosedWith regards to this Ask MetaFilter thread about old folks referring to things redundantly e.g. Cadillac Car or Hamburger Sandwich, I was watching the news this morning and heard a story about people lining up to buy the “Xbox Game.”
I’ve eliminated all clocks from my field of view at work. It seems like knowing what time it was just made me less productive. Now I just wait for somebody to tell me it’s time for lunch!
There’s something great about this story. Apparently the Rolling Stones were playing too loud, and the neighbors called to complain. This would be pretty standard issue stuff if it took place in some upstanding town like Omaha or Milwaukee, but the aggrieved parties in this dispute were residents of a city (San Francisco) that usually paints itself as pretty easygoing and tolerant compared to the rest of the country.
What’s more, it’s not even as if the Stones showed up in some traditionally yuppie enclave like Nob Hill or Pac Heights and started jamming away; No, they were playing at Giants Stadium in SoMa when the noise complaints came in. What this means is, people who *intentionally* moved to a semi-industrial neighborhood, a few blocks away from a *baseball stadium* got hacked off about what? Not being able to hear their Vivaldi on the old Victrola? I don’t buy it.
I guess maybe Jonathan Richman was right:
People are moving to California who hate the beach and things,
I think they’d rather watch TV than hear a real person sing,
Whatever advancement in vending science it is that allows machines to work pretty consistently has been left out of this thing. Even when items are loaded properly (which is occasionally) things still can’t be counted on to fall down on the first try. How often have I seen a Snickers come to the front of the shelf and just balance there, like a suicide jumper with second thoughts. Today my Snickers even made it over the edge, but like a suicide jumper who manages to actually take the plunge, but gets caught by his shoelace on the claws of a protruding gargoyle, it remained suspended like the extended tongue of a schoolyard bully, giving me the “Bronx Cheer.” So while I could obviously just order up another Snickers and hopefully complete the transaction with a surplus for later, maybe I don’t want two Snickers right now, did you ever think of that? So I ordered a pack of peanut M&Ms from the shelf above the Snickers. I figured that like a suicide jumper from a higher floor who dislodges the guy stuck on the gargoyle, the heavy sack of peanut filled chocolates would clobber the Sinckers and bring them both tumbling to the ground (and eventually to my mouth). This way I’d have the Snickers I wanted, and some M&Ms for later, for variety’s sake! Well the M&Ms hit the Snickers all right, but it held on like a suicide jumper who has decided he wants to live after witnessing the grisly death of another. Reluctantly, I put in 75 more cents and ordered another Snickers, which pushed out the original before falling itself. 3 purchases later, I had finally come out even! Now I have enough candy for a week…
Well for those of you who don’t know, I just finished moving to California for a job. It’s been the a pretty crazy last few weeks but I finally moved into my new apartment last night. There’s still a lot of stuff to set up like broadband and getting a chair to sit on and all that kind of minor detail work =) but the job’s going well so far and the neighborhood I’m in is pretty awesome. For your viewing pleasure, here’s a video of me opening my bed (which folds into the wall, all Batman style). Also, note that since being out here, I’ve been posting to my Flickr account a lot more, too. So check that out if you please. Normal updates to resume here soon. There’s some good stuff I’ve been meaning to post, but the whole sleeping on a couch thing has made my schedule a bit unpredictable for the last while.
